Con-less Dubs do just enough to snatch Cork's 'mixed bag'
All-Ireland SFC preliminary quarter-final: Dublin 1-19 (1-1-18) Cork 1-16 (1-0-16)
Twelve months ago, John Cleary stood outside Cork's dressing room in Inniskeen and spoke of inter-county management being 'tough going'.
Louth had been sent out of the championship by a solitary point and he was using the same line on Saturday, with the difference again just a score.
Only this time, Cork had dictated a lot of the terms. In Monaghan, they had to mirror a lot of Louth's rearguard action. Here, they dictated a lot of the engagement, had lashings of possession, and showed the type of endeavour people have been crying out for them to show.
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Who knows what might have happened had Seán McDonnell's two-point free effort not dropped into Stephen Cluxton's hands in the dying minutes. Had it gone over, Cork would have tied up the game and the press they would have put on Dublin's kick-out may have yielded another opportunity.
Instead, the remaining score of the game came from Dublin substitute Luke Breathnach and Dublin came out the right side of a close-run thing for the second time in the space of two weeks after foiling Derry.
Does it diminish Cork's valiance that Dublin chose not to bring on their leader Con O'Callaghan to see out the win? In one way, yes. In another way, no. Dessie Farrell ultimately had enough faith in his other charges to complete the job.
Cork manager John Cleary after his side's defeat. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
'We sort of run the gauntlet on it a little bit for the last 10 minutes or so. Thankfully, that decision worked out, and we gave him an extra seven days to recover, and he should be good for the next day.'
He continued: 'That was the plan. It's not to say that we knew this wouldn't be a tight affair, but we were just going to hope that we had enough. There were conversations with the coaches with a couple of minutes to go. We just decided to hold on. If it was a little bit tighter, I think you would have seen him come in for sure, yeah.'
Farrell had anticipated more than pluck from Cork and so it transpired. A total of 1-8 from Cork's inside line as they made endless darts from the end-line out the field to pick up ball was a tidy return.
Dublin were not impressive and the little pressure they put on Cork, especially in the first half, contributed to the proximity of the teams. Cork led 1-8 to 0-9 at half-time, Chris Óg Jones's 11th-minute goal a combination of kick-out pressure, quick-thinking by Brian Hurley, and a sterling finish by the Jones.
Brian Howard's reponse came in the 45th minute, taking an indirect free from Ciarán Kilkenny and sending the ball to the same Hill 16 net with the same conviction as Jones. It put Dublin ahead for the first time. The Dublin of old would have bundled scores onto that three-pointer but Cork's response was excellent. They produced the next four points to go ahead in the 53rd minute. The teams were level on three occasions up to the 58th minute but from there on Dublin outscored Cork four points to one as they regained the upper hand on kick-outs.
'I suppose we were a bit starved of possession at times there,' admitted Cleary, who was upset with some of Seán Hurson's calls. 'We couldn't do anything with Dublin's kick-out particularly, which had been successful for us all year, and I thought we didn't get the rub of the green from the referee either.
'I don't like criticising referees, but some of them (decisions) were three feet from me and I could not understand it. And then when it happened the other way, Dublin seemed to get them. There was one off the ball then, and we were looking down the first half, the exact same thing was happening, and we didn't get any of them.'
Afterwards, Cleary was using another 2024 line – 'a mixed bag' – to sum up Cork's season, the fourth and final year of his current term. There will be plenty keen to see him remain on but inconsistency remains a frustration for him.
Cork, he says, don't need much to get them going for the vaunted opposition. It's the other games where they have been lacking. 'For the bigger matches, we don't seem to have a problem.
'Any time we play Kerry, even though we were beaten, well beaten in the round robin, I thought we played very well for a lot of it. And the Dublin match again, there wasn't a lot of getting up for the lads, I knew that they were in the right place coming in here today.
'That's why we'd be very disappointed to come so close, and everyone would be looking back at this incident and that incident when you're beaten by one score, but look, that's the nature of the championship this year, and I suppose maybe the one pleasing thing is that we know at our best that we can compete with anyone in the country.'
Scorers for Dublin: S. Bugler (1tp), C. Costello (2 frees (0-5 each); B. Howard (1-0); P. Small (0-4); C. Kilkenny, J. Small, L. Gannon, N. Scully, L. Breathnach (0-1 each).
Scorers for Cork: C. Jones (1-3); M. Cronin (0-5, 2 frees); B. Hurley, C. O'Callaghan (0-2 each); I Maguire, M.A. Martin, S. Walsh (45), C. O'Mahony (0-1 each).
DUBLIN: S. Cluxton; E. Murchan, D. Byrne, S. MacMahon; B. Howard, J. Small, L. Gannon; P. Ó Cofaigh-Byrne, C. Kilkenny (c); K. McGinnis, S. Bugler, N. Scully; P. Small, L. O'Dell, C. Costello.
Subs for Dublin: C. Murphy for L. O'Dell (45); L. Breathnach for K. McGinnis (56); T. Lahiff for L. Gannon (59); N. Doran for N. Scully (68).
CORK: M.A. Martin; M. Shanley, D. O'Mahony, N. Lordan; B. O'Driscoll, S. Brady, M. Taylor; P. Walsh, C. O'Callaghan; I. Maguire, S. Walsh, S. McDonnell; M. Cronin, B. Hurley (c), C. Jones.
Subs for Cork: E. McSweeney for P. Walsh (48); C. Cahalane for S. McDonnell (temp 49-58); C. O'Mahony for B. Hurley (55); S. Powter for M. Taylor (58); L. Fahy for N. Lordan (63).
Referee: S. Hurson (Tyrone).
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